Chapter 10: Under the Ice

I broke that promise four hours later.

At midnight the bolts slid shut, and I sat behind the desk and looked at the card until the words stopped meaning anything.

At 12:30 Neil came down the stairs, the way he did every night now, with two cups of cocoa from the machine on his floor.

"She asleep?"

"She's been asleep since ten," I said. "She hasn't slept through a night in three years."

He set a cup in front of me.

"Neil, I need you to sit the desk at three."

"Me?"

"Mr. Coe said an empty desk is an open door. He said nobody living. He didn't say it had to be the clerk."

"Where are you going?"

I put my finger on rule six.

He looked at it for a long time.

"She made you promise not to go out on the lake," he said.

"That's why I have to."

He didn't argue after that.

At three I got up.

He came around and sat in my chair with both hands flat on the desk.

"If anything knocks," I said, "don't open the doors."

"Even if it's you?"

I thought about that.

"If it's me, ask me about the pea soup."

The back stairs went down past the kitchen and kept going, into the cold.

At the bottom was the boathouse level, a long stone room with a low ceiling.

A frozen boat slip ran down the middle, and a row of plain doors lined the far wall.

It smelled like wet rope and old ice.

One door had a paper snowflake taped to it and a card that said ERIN in purple marker.

No light showed under it, and there was no sound at all.